


Sweetheart (Grip)

by mrs_d



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Domestic, M/M, Slice of Life, also: fuck that endgame ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-19 22:55:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19365442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrs_d/pseuds/mrs_d
Summary: Sam was the home that Steve would never have found if he hadn’t ended up in this century.





	Sweetheart (Grip)

**Author's Note:**

> Written because I've yet to see a SamSteve on this topic, and you know what they say about being the change you want to see in the world! 
> 
> Unbeta'd, only barely researched. See end notes for references. 
> 
> A few quick warnings: 1) references to a family member being ill and the difficult decisions that a family has to make at a time like that; 2) discussion of the challenges of living with someone who has PTSD; and 3) passing references to age-gap relationships that would have been perceived as normal in the first half of the 20th century.
> 
> Talk to me on Twitter (mrs_dawnaway), Discord (mrsdawnaway), or Dreamwidth (mrs_d) if you would like more specific content warnings/tags.

“You know you don’t have to do this, right?” Sam asked.

Steve took his eyes off the road to send Sam a quick smile. “I know.” 

“And you do know everybody’s gonna be there?” Sam went on. “My mom, my brother and sister? My aunt Roberta and her kids? All of whom you’ve never met?”

“Yes,” Steve said. He thought he managed to keep the nerves out of his voice, but when glanced over again, Sam looked a little skeptical. 

“It’ll be fine,” Steve reassured him, hoping that Sam knew he meant more than just meeting the extended family. 

Sam seemed to catch on, because he sighed. “I know,” he said. “This whole thing has just been....” He shook his head. 

“I know,” Steve echoed. 

There wasn’t much more he could say. It’d been a rough few months — the better part of a year, actually — as Sam and his family came to grips with the fact that Lillian Wilson, their long-reigning matriarch and Sam’s father’s mother, couldn’t get by on her own anymore. Six weeks ago, they’d made the difficult decision to send her to a care facility in Baton Rouge, and today, the Wilson clan was gathering at Lillian’s house in the country to clear it out and get it ready to sell. 

It was the culmination of a journey that the family had been on for some time, but that didn’t make it any easier. And, since they still had a long way to go until they got to Louisiana, Steve decided to try and get Sam’s mind off it. 

“I’m not too worried about meeting your family,” he said, which made Sam turn his head. “I’m hoping my proven skill at carrying heavy things will impress them. That and my tight shirt,” he added. “Worked on one Wilson, didn’t it?” 

Sam huffed out a laugh. “I was worried about your airflow,” he protested. “That’s the only reason I even looked at you.”

“Uh huh,” said Steve, glancing over again. “Whatever you have to tell yourself, Sam.”

“Shut up, you know you’re hot,” Sam muttered.

It was Steve’s turn to laugh. “Humble, too.”

Sam just shook his head, and Steve kept driving.

* * *

Steve drove on through the night while Sam slept. They could have saved themselves some time if they’d flown, but Sam said he’d probably come out of this weekend with a load of stuff from his grandmother’s house that wouldn’t fit in his luggage, so, rather than having to ship things back to New York, they took the car.

Besides, it was a familiar routine, a sort of habit they’d gotten into while chasing Bucky across hell’s half-acre. Steve, needing less sleep, would drive the Interstate, they’d check into a motel on the city limits, get some rest, and then Sam would take over for the in-town stuff. (Steve did not have the patience to deal with 21st century city drivers.)

Today was no different; Sam fell asleep around Knoxville, but he rallied when Steve decelerated for the off-ramp at Baton Rouge. They’d been on the road for almost 22 hours, and for all that Steve’s body wanted to move, the second he stopped the car, his brain was done, and he was glad to have Sam’s help finding a place to crash. 

The motel bed was squeaky and hard, but Steve slept without dreaming until sunrise. 

He wasn’t sure what woke him until he heard someone outside. He tensed, but then he put two and two together: Sam wasn’t in bed with him, and whoever was opening their door had a key. A second later, Sam stepped through the door with a tray of coffee and a couple of paper bags that smelled amazing. Steve’s stomach growled.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up,” Sam said, as Steve got out of bed.

“No apology needed,” said Steve. He took the bags and the coffee, so Sam could close the door behind him. “What’d you bring me?”

“I brought _us_ bacon and eggs from a diner down the way,” Sam said pointedly. “Also half a dozen fresh beignets.”

“God bless Louisiana,” Steve said fervently, opening that bag first.

Sam laughed. “Oh yeah, my family’s gonna love you.”

* * *

“It’s a big job,” Mrs. Wilson — _Darlene,_ Steve corrected himself — announced, once she’d made the rounds and introduced him to everyone. “So I think we’d better split up. As we all know, Grandma Wilson was a bit of a hoarder. By-product of coming through the Depression, I think— oh,” she concluded, with an embarrassed look at Steve. “Uh, no offence.”

“None taken, it’s true,” Steve said to reassure her. “We didn’t have anything, so we kept everything.”

“Like what?” asked Sam’s cousin, Darius.

“Nails, bits of fabric, paper that’s only been used on one side,” Steve answered. “That kind of thing.”

“I once caught this guy cutting the ribbon out of a fancy shopping bag instead of just throwing it out,” Sam added.

“I thought maybe I could use it,” Steve protested. “And besides, the recycling plant would have had to do it anyway, I was just saving them some work.”

But no one was listening to him; Sam’s older brother, Gideon, was staring at Sam with an exaggerated expression of shock. “Are you really gonna shame Captain America like that?” he said.

Everyone chuckled. “Forget Captain America, I’m talking about my husband,” Sam retorted.

The group — including Steve — laughed harder at that. Sam grabbed Steve’s hand and gave him a look like maybe he didn’t know that Sam didn’t mean anything by it. Steve knew, of course, but he held onto Sam’s hand anyway. 

“There’s a lot of ground to cover,” Darlene continued, getting them back on track, “so we’re doing this in teams. Roberta, Shawn, you’re in the basement.”

Sam’s aunt and uncle nodded. “You got it, boss,” said Shawn.

“Gideon and Darius, I want you in the kitchen. It’s a nasty job, I know,” Darlene added, when Darius made a face. “I got you some rubber gloves and lots of garbage bags. Don’t save anything unless you’re sure it’s good.”

Gideon nodded seriously; Darius still looked a little green.

“Clarise, Gillian, same deal with the bathrooms,” Darlene went on, addressing Darius’s younger twin sisters. “Grandma kept a lot of perfumes, lotions, that kind of thing. Keep the most recent, and if there’s something you like, it’s yours. Otherwise, it’s down the sink.”

“Okay, Auntie,” said Clarise. She was all of 22, with long braids that set her apart from her sister’s short spiky hairdo.

“And Sarah, you and me are in the living room,” Darlene told Sam’s sister, Sarah.

“Oh, good, Grandma’s photo albums,” Sarah replied. Steve wondered for a second if she was being sarcastic, but she smiled at Sam like it was an inside joke.

“And Sam, like we talked about, you and Steve are in the attic,” Darlene concluded. “There’s a lot of heavy stuff that needs to come down. Most of it’ll go to the Sally Ann or to the dump, but if you’re not sure, ask me. Oh, and there’s Granddad’s gear, too, Sam.”

This afterthought made Sam tense up, squeezing Steve’s hand. Steve shot him a questioning look, but Sam seemed to be avoiding his eye.

The group broke apart a minute later, with the teams heading to their designated areas with all the precision that Steve would expect from a military family. He followed Sam to the stairs, since he didn’t know where he was going.

“Feel that?” Sam asked, short of breath and pulling at his shirt collar to fan himself. “It’s only gonna get worse the higher we go.”

Steve nodded, though he didn’t mind the heat too much; air conditioning gave him a chill, and he hated being cold. “So that’s why you told me to wear shorts and bring my bathing suit.”

“No, the bathing suit’s because Gideon has a pool,” Sam corrected him. “And a hot tub. That’ll be nice once the sun goes down, especially with all the muscles I’m about to pull.”

Steve frowned. “Well, take it easy,” he cautioned. “No need to give yourself heat stroke or something. I’m here, let me do the heavy lifting.”

Sam was silent for a moment. When they reached the top, he turned and gave Steve a surprisingly serious look.

“I’ll try,” he said, leaning in to brush his lips over Steve’s.

The kiss was quick and puzzling, like everything else about the strange mood that Sam seemed to have been in since they left New York, but before Steve could ask, Sam led them down the hall, to a door that was painted white and looked slightly wider than usual.

“Care to do the honors?” Sam asked.

Steve reached for the knob. It was warm, and already he could feel the heat emanating from around it. As Sam promised, it only got worse when the door creaked open, releasing a wave of musty, humid air. Climbing the last few stairs to the attic was like walking into a sauna; Steve immediately felt sweat beading up on his face, and his lungs hitched in a way that they hadn’t in over half a century.

There were only a handful of small windows lighting the space, so it took Steve’s eyes a few seconds to adjust to the gloom. Once they did, he could see what Darlene was talking about: there were several pieces of heavy, old-fashioned furniture, including a kid’s bedroom set, a cloth-covered sofa, an antique table with sewing machine attached, and what looked to be a china cabinet.

“How did she even get these things up here?” Steve wondered aloud.

“My dad and granddad,” Sam answered. “That used to be my bed — well, it was everyone’s. Dad’s, Gideon’s, Sarah’s, and then mine. Being the baby, I slept in it till I was 15 and way too big for it.”

Steve chuckled at the thought of tall, teenaged, gangly Sam crammed in the bed with his limbs sticking out. 

“Don’t know why they didn’t just get rid of the old thing,” Sam went on thoughtfully. “Maybe they thought they’d have another kid someday, or maybe they put it aside for our kids, I don’t know. But they trucked it up here the year before Dad got shot, so....”

Sam trailed off, and Steve let it be. Sam didn’t talk about his father too much; Steve got the impression that, of all the people he’d lost, his dad was the oldest and still the hardest. So Steve wrapped an arm around Sam’s waist instead and held him close, just long enough for the sweat to build up between them.

“Okay,” said Sam, pulling away. “Enough memories, let’s get at it.”

They worked for two straight hours, bringing down the bedroom furniture and the sofa. Even with Steve’s strength, negotiating the narrow attic stairs, the upstairs hall, and the main stairs was a two-man job. It was good work, though, and it more than made up for the hours of being stationary in the car. And it was always nice having a mission with Sam, especially one that didn’t involve explosions or injuries.

They soon fell into a rhythm, and the others kept the path clear for them. Sam’s cousin Gillian took to hanging out by the front door to hold the front door open for them, until her twin sister yelled something like about leaving her with Grandma’s perfumes so she could thirst after Sam’s husband. Steve felt himself go beet red, and Sam laughed so hard they had to take a breather in the yard.

When they decided to tackle the china cabinet, they discovered that it was still full of dishes, so Steve got them both some water while Sam consulted with his mother. Darlene returned upstairs with them, and her eyes widened at what they’d discovered.

“Oh my goodness,” she gasped. “I haven’t seen those dishes in thirty years.”

“Really?” Steve said, surprised.

“At least,” Darlene insisted. “Sammy, you remember these? Grandma and Granddad always used them at Christmas.”

“Not at the kids’ table they didn’t,” Sam countered.

Darlene laughed. “Well, come on, let’s wrap it up.”

“I’m not touching it,” Sam said instantly. “Grandma threatened to skin me alive if I even looked too hard at her bone china.”

Darlene rolled her eyes. “All right, then. Steve, why don’t you come with me, we’ll get some newspaper and boxes from downstairs.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Steve. 

He spent the next half-hour working with Darlene. It was nice to learn more about the Wilson family history; for instance, she told him these dishes were a wedding present when Grandma and Granddad got married in ’49.

“She was only 17,” Darlene said, “and he was 28. Seems kinda creepy nowadays, but I guess that’s how it was done back then.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Steve.

“Of course you do,” said Darlene with a chuckle. “Sorry, I forgot who I was talking to there.”

Steve waved the apology away. “I didn’t come across relationships like that too much,” he said, thinking of the people he’d known a lifetime ago. “It happened more often in the country, I think. Bucky had this cousin out in Indiana, Victoria— everybody called her Queenie. Got married in 1929, I think it was. He was 27, she was 15. And she had five babies in 6 years.”

Darlene shook her head. “Sounds downright criminal now, but times were different. People grew up faster then, I think.”

Steve nodded. It was true. He remembered what he was like at 15. He’d dropped out of school by then, and spent his days pounding the pavement looking for work that was scarce. He’d felt grown up, and so much older at 18 when his mother passed away. It was almost laughable now; he’d had no idea what was to come.

Resisting the pull of the past, Steve turned to try and include Sam in the conversation. But Sam was sitting in front of a dusty old trunk in the far corner, staring at a small and familiar-looking velvet box in his hands.

Darlene followed Steve’s gaze and sighed softly. Steve sent her a quizzical look, and she leaned near.

“He was so worried about you going through that thing,” she said in a low voice, “I don’t think he spared one thought for himself going through it.”

“What do you mean?” Steve asked, matching her tone. “What is it?”

“See for yourself,” Darlene said, just as quiet. Then she stood up. “I’m going down for more newspaper,” she announced in a normal voice.

She nodded in Sam’s direction and sent Steve a significant look. Steve took the hint, getting to his feet as well. Darlene gave him a quick smile as she headed for the stairs.

Sam, Steve couldn’t help but notice, hadn’t looked over or acknowledged his mother’s departure in any way. Steve knew that Sam could be startled easily when he zoned out like this, so he crossed the space between them as quietly as he could and edged into his line of sight.

“Sam?” he said cautiously.

Sam stirred, taking a breath in through his nose. He turned to Steve, but his eyes still seemed far away. “Hey,” he said. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

Sam blinked a few times, then shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Steve half-chuckled. “Okay. Mind if I pull up some floor here?”

“Be my guest,” Sam replied. He shifted over to make room in front of the trunk. “I was just... this was my granddad’s stuff.”

“I kinda figured,” said Steve. He reached hesitantly for the box in Sam’s hands. Sam let him take it, and as soon as Steve felt the velvet under his fingers, he knew why it had looked so familiar. He opened it, knowing what he would find.

“European Campaign,” Sam told him, though Steve could see that for himself. “Infantry Badge. Plus the Victory Medal, of course.”

Steve nodded. He had each of those himself, having been awarded the Victory Medal after his apparent death.

“Granddad wasn’t supposed to fight,” Sam went on. “His unit was sent to North Africa to build airfields. But the 92nd took guys from Granddad’s division when they needed them, and, next thing he knew, he was fighting in Italy.”

“The Buffalo Soldiers,” Steve murmured. He hadn’t met any of them himself; by the time they saw active duty in ’44, Steve was pretty heavily involved in rooting out HYDRA up north, but he’d heard rumors of the difficulties they faced. There was a reason there was a song about them.

“Win the war for America,” Sam chanted back at him. He smiled, but it was bitter. “I used to think he was a terrible person.”

“Bob Marley?” Steve said stupidly, and then he caught on. “Oh. Why is that?”

Sam half-shrugged. “He wasn’t exactly the warmest grandfather a kid could ask for. Kinda mean, to be honest.”

“I’m sorry,” said Steve.

“No, it’s fine,” Sam answered. “He never beat us, or anything. But he drank quite a bit, and he was kinda distant with us kids.”

“Still,” said Steve. “It’s too bad you couldn’t have been closer.”

Sam smiled faintly. “I remember one time, I think I must have been twelve or thirteen, maybe? I had to do a history project about the war. So I biked all the way over here, right? I was so excited to hear about the guns, and the tanks, and the bombs, and all that.”

Steve grimaced. He thought he could see where this was going. 

“He got so mad,” Sam continued. “Tore a strip off me like you wouldn’t believe. Made me cry.”

Steve reached out and laid a hand on Sam’s arm, offering comfort that was twenty-five years too late. 

“Grandma came out of the kitchen, asked what all the yelling was about, and— and, I thought he was gonna hit her,” Sam admitted. “I’d never seen somebody lose it like that.”

“Must have been terrifying,” Steve said, thinking of that poor boy all those years ago, who’d unknowingly kicked a hornet’s nest.

“It was,” said Sam. “Granddad went down to the basement to watch TV, and probably drink, and Grandma took me into the kitchen and sat me down at the table. She gave me some milk and a couple of cookies, and told me that Granddad didn’t talk about the war.”

Steve nodded, waiting while Sam swallowed hard. 

“Of course, that made me even more upset,” he went on, blinking the shine out of his eyes. “Because I wanted to do a good job on my school project.” 

Sam smiled and looked at Steve for the first time in a while. “And Grandma said, _You know, Sammy, I lived through the war, too. Don’t you think it’d be interesting to get a woman’s perspective for once?”_  

Steve chuckled. “She’s got a point.” 

Sam nodded, but his smile dimmed a bit. “She was just trying to protect him.”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed quietly. 

“I can’t help thinking… if he’d had a group he could go to, or a counselor, or someone like— like—”

“Like you?” Steve suggested. 

Sam exhaled and hung his head. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Yeah, someone like me.” He looked up, sending Steve a wry look. “Some ego, huh?”

“Nah,” Steve told him. He shuffled closer on the floor, until his arm was around Sam’s shoulder. It was too hot to stay like that for long — Steve’s shirt was clingy with sweat, and so was Sam’s — but it was important and essential that Steve be touching him right now. Sam seemed to agree, given the way he nestled into Steve’s arms. 

“You’re good at what you do,” Steve told him. “You deserve to have an ego.”

Sam huffed out a laugh and pulled away. “Wasn’t fishing for that, but thanks.”

Steve smiled and snuck a kiss before Sam could get too far. “Still true,” he said.

It was hard to tell in the dim light of the attic, but Steve was pretty sure Sam’s cheeks darkened a little as he knelt in front of the box and returned to his grandfather’s things. 

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s see what else is in here.” 

“Let’s,” Steve agreed. 

As they started sorting through the items, it didn’t take long for Steve to realize that they’d stumbled upon a treasure trove of WW2 memorabilia. He thought of the historians and archivists he’d met since waking up — the ones who seemed almost annoyed that Steve had had the wherewithal, not only to live, but to ask for his possessions back. He wondered what they would say if they knew that these things had survived in a Louisiana attic for as long as he was under the ice. Longer, even. 

“Whoa,” said Sam suddenly, jolting Steve out of his thoughts. 

“What?”

In reply, Sam handed him the metal box that he’d just opened. Inside, half-wrapped in a leather sheet, was a handgun that looked all too familiar. 

“That’s an M1911A1,” Steve said out loud, the syllables rolling off his tongue out of long habit. He gestured at the box. “May I…?”

“Sure,” Sam said, nodding. 

Gingerly, Steve unrolled the protective sheet and inspected the weapon. Back when he first woke up, he’d spent a long time catching up on American military history. (The good, the bad, and the ugly, Fury had called it, and rightfully so.) One of the smaller surprises was that this gun had remained the standard-issue sidearm until the mid-1980s. 

Picking it up was like going back in time. A flood of memories released at the feel of its heft in his hand. It was a good gun. 

“Did you ever have one of these?” he asked.

Sam shook his head. “By the time I got there, we were already using Berettas. A lot of my superiors had these, though.”

“Mine’s still in the Arctic,” Steve said sadly. “Stark never found it, and it wasn’t on the plane when they got me.”

Sam hummed sympathetically. He watched Steve handle the gun, and said, “It’s kind of amazing that Granddad got to keep this and bring it home.”

Steve smiled, remembering the crazy things — mortar shells, bayonets, rifle scopes — that Dugan used to sneak off the front lines to take home. It didn’t surprise him a bit that Sam’s grandfather had managed it too. Dugan’s collection was made up of trophies, though, which was technically allowed with the right paperwork, and that wasn’t the case here. This gun definitely belonged to Sam’s grandfather, as Sam noticed a minute later when he turned the weapon over in his hands.

“I think that’s Grandma,” he said, indicating the picture of a beautiful young woman that was under the weapon’s clear plastic grip. “How’d he get it in there?”

“The screws come out,” Steve explained, showing him. “Here, and here. Then you just cut the picture to fit and put the cover on top.”

“Huh,” said Sam. 

“We called it a sweetheart grip,” Steve told him. “Sweetheart,” he added. 

Sam chuckled. “Did a lot of soldiers do that?”

“Yep. I had a picture of Peggy in mine for a while,” said Steve, remembering. “Then a HYDRA goon hit me with a flamethrower and the grip melted right into my gloves. Hurt like a son of a bitch. It was almost two days before I could hold anything again.”

“That wasn’t in any of your movies,” Sam remarked. “Or the history books.”

“Funny what those things leave out,” said Steve with a grin. “In any case, yeah, it was a normal thing. I think a lot of guys liked having a reminder of what they were doing there, and why they were using that gun.”

Sam hummed thoughtfully and then leaned in close and kissed Steve, soft and tender, with just the barest bit of beard bristle. It was comforting and familiar, but very much _now,_ as opposed to the _then_ that they’d been dealing with all morning.

Steve set the gun in its box aside and wrapped his arms around Sam, until they were on their knees together, heedless of the attic’s dusty heat. The kiss that had started so sweetly deepened, and Steve felt a small thrill race through him as Sam opened his mouth, nudging his tongue between Steve’s lips. Steve took a sharp breath in through his nose and clutched at Sam’s damp t-shirt, savoring the slide of sweaty skin underneath the fabric. If he just tugged it up a little more—

“You boys hungry?” Darlene called from the stairs.

Steve jumped in surprise and pulled back, but he and Sam hadn’t quite managed to untangle themselves by the time Darlene entered the room, talking.

“Gideon’s ordering some pizza, but he said you’d have to pay for yourself, Steve, because— oh,” she said, stopping short. Then raised her eyebrows and cast a pointed look between them. “Leave a little room for the Holy Spirit, there, fellas,” she said.

“Mom,” Sam groaned, but he moved further back nonetheless. 

Darlene laughed. “All right, all right, I’ll stop teasing,” she said. “Come on, let’s get some lunch.”

He and Sam followed her back down to the relative coolness of the first floor. On the stairs, Steve reached for Sam’s hand and intertwined their fingers. Sam shot him a quick breathtaking smile and, as he started to tell his mother about the gun they’d found with its picture of Grandma Wilson, Steve took a mental image of this moment— to store it, just in case he needed a reminder of the future he was fighting for.

**Author's Note:**

> Sources:  
> [2nd Cavalry Division](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_Cavalry_Division_\(United_States\))  
> [92nd Infantry Division](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/92nd_Infantry_Division_\(United_States\))  
> Images:  
> [Combat Infantryman Badge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_Infantryman_Badge)  
> [WWII Victory Medal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_Victory_Medal_\(United_States\))  
> [European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European%E2%80%93African%E2%80%93Middle_Eastern_Campaign_Medal)  
> 


End file.
